Prayer

So, after a conversation with a friend, I think it is time to post this entry. It has been a long time coming, and I pray (ha) that you can connect with it and, perhaps, change the way you pray.

Prayer is an interesting thing. Prayer requests seem even more interesting. Do you remember being a child and praying for the most mundane things? Your dog, to get a day off of school, for a different color hair… any number of things. One day, if you were in Sunday School and mentioned during prayer request time the people overseas, or kids in Africa, or soldiers in the war, everyone thought you were “so sweet” or “so smart”. It was a good thing that you were thinking outside of yourself…

As you get older, this is kept up. Everyone is always requesting prayer for the big things in the world, and they forget the mundane. Of course, at 30, the mundane is different than it was at 4, but it is never spoken during prayer request time.

Why? Why do we only pray for the big things (friends and family with cancer, soldiers overseas, and dying children in Africa), and never the mundane? Now, don’t get me wrong, I pray everyday for the people around me who are not well, for our men and women in the armed forces, and for all the children around the world who don’t have people to care for them. However, it seems we have forgotten how to pray for the little things. And maybe we do in our own quiet time, but it is not wrong to be among your peers and request prayers for yourself. Isn’t that the point of prayer requests? To ask for prayer and support in what you’re struggling with? When prayers are always requested for those farther removed, aren’t we actually the superficial church? The depth in the church is in becoming honest with those around you. Becoming personal, and going past the point of those ‘distant’ prayers.

Why are we not comfortable with asking for help? If you can’t ask for help in a small group within your church, how can you ask for help from anyone else? It lends itself to people bottling up what is going on in their life. And what good does that do? It just keeps everyone separated in a way that is dividing the world. In the same way we are all removed from each other by technology, the world is becoming more and more superficial. Seems the depth is missing in all aspects of life, including where is should be the basis.

Now the question: How do we change it?

In no way am I saying to stop praying for the BIG things. They should be on the list every day. It is helpful with a white board prayer list to permanently write these constants at the top. The rest can be transient, erasing things as they are resolved and adding new ones as they come up. Constantly keeping up with what is going on in your life will help you realize just how many things there are in your life, and when you share them with others, just how many people care about the ‘little’ things in your life.

I challenge you, the next time you are in a setting taking prayer requests, to ask for something PERSONAL. And it doesn’t have to be that you are sick. Maybe you are stressed. Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are working for a promotion. Share yourself with the people around you. THAT is what church is about.

The internet and jazz...

I've come to decide that the internet isn't really a new invention. In fact, it's something that's been around for years and that people of all generations (except maybe the youngest) know about and have used.

The internet is a vacuum. A vacuum of time and productivity. A vacuum of almost everything intellectual.

On the internet, everyone is allowed to have a voice to do and say everything they want. Often, this voice is unintelligible rambling, and therein lies my point. Freedom of speech is amazing, it truly is. But I wonder when it was that we decided that the majority of people need not speak/write properly. Is it any wonder people are unemployed when the educational system is underfunded and people read m3$$@g3s instead of a completely written out e-mail? When everything is written in txt and other shorthands? Mind you, these things are great in certain places, but the problem is that people are lacking basic foundations before they begin to 'mess with the system.'

Take jazz for instance. It is improvisation, so, technically, anyone should be able to get up there and play. Well, take a step back. Anyone who can produce a sound on an instrument should be able to get up there and play, correct?

No. Not quite.

In fact, jazz musicians are some of the most technically skilled musicians there are. In my first improvisation class (other than the basics of improv I learned in high school), I was presented on the first day with a list of scales. You see, scales are what make the tonal system WORK. Without interval relationships between notes, we would not be able to tell major from minor from dorian or mixolydian. When you put certain interval patterns together, you make a scale.

A major scale goes like this (W=whole step, and H=half step):
WWHWWWH. EVERY major scale follows this pattern. It is these relationships that make that scale identifiable among all the sounds happening. The scales are the FOUNDATION of playing music, but especially jazz.

Most musicians that are classically trained can play the major scales and three forms of minor scales for you at the drop of a hat, and then play arpeggios up and down and around you. But jazz musicians spend HOURS upon HOURS a day perfecting not just majors and minors and the respective arpeggios, but they learn all the modal scales, and then dominant seventh chords, inverted arpeggios, and chordal inversions. Behind every jazz player is an arsenal of theory knowledge. All of this sits in their head until they see the shorthand on the sheet that says Gmaj7 and they play the notes that fit.

You see, they don't just get up there and make things up. They know their foundations before they do anything else.

But what I see more and more as people keep writing and posting and making videos and tweeting is not the convenience of shorthand in a needed situation. I see legitimate ignorance to the fact that there is a world out there that is expecting a certain sense of decorum from those entering the work-force. In some jobs you may not have to have any social interaction, but that is the rarity. And let me tell you, your boss is going to be able to expect for you to write a report or give a statement at some point in your career.

Before people start learning shorthand or playing with txt, they should learn proper English and maybe someday they will actually get a job. But until they get out of the internet frame of mind, they will be stuck.

Our system is backwards. The foundations are what is coming second or third. The foundation is ignored for the ease of a cell phone.

TXT will not pay your bills, but proper English might help you land that job you need.

Just sayin'.

Struggle bus

First things first: I did not come up with this term. Not at all. But tonight, I'm going to use it to explain some things...

I am riding the struggle bus a bit this semester. It's nothing BIG, but it's always those little things that come and get you. And right now, I'm actually struggling with something most people in America are struggling with; in fact, most people in the world are struggling with this same thing.

MONEY.

Supposedly it's taboo to talk about money. But I'm only going to talk about it in a way to connect us all. We all struggle with something, it is just that in a recession, most of us are struggling with it, so why don't we say something about it?

Today, I'm going to say that even though I'm struggling, I'm remembering what I have. There are times that I'm looking around my house thinking, "What can I sell????" Well, guess what? That means I have expendable things in my life, and how lucky am I that that is the case? The difference then is, "What is worth money to sell?" and that's a very different question. But I'm still amazed at how much I have around me. How awesome is that?

Perspective is something that is really important. I've really tried hard since being back to not have excess around me. I don't want to have a full house. I want to have a functional and comfortable house, but I don't need a million things for that to be the case. However, that doesn't help the selling-things idea... but that's okay. I still have a very comfortable life.

Struggling is normal. We all go through struggles. What differs is how we handle it. Someone asked me last night what I do when I'm in a 'funk'. A funk for me can range from being depressed, to being anxious about something... It's just part of my life. But what do I do about it? Well, I learned a long time ago not to keep it inside me, for one. In college I began the practice of sitting in my church's sanctuary and praying or singing or just sitting there. If it was late at night, there was this church nearby my college that had three crosses in their yard, so I would sit there. I still do this. I go to church and I'll sit in the sanctuary, or I'll talk to people. Sometimes, I go for a drive, because just for a little while, I need to be alone and SEE the world around me.

This morning I had an amazing moment on the way to school. My car has problems so whenever I'm driving it, I'm praying that nothing happens during that trip, that it can hold out until I can get the money together to fix it. But on the road this morning, there was an ambulance driving down the road and all the cars pulled over to the side to let it through. This is a law, of course. But really, human decency stuck out to me. When it's important, people get out of the way.

I don't know that I have a point to the rambling tonight, but really I am just doing what I told everyone I would do: be real. Sometimes, I'll write about crazy things, sometimes about biblical things, and tonight, I'm writing about a tough thing. I'm a real person. I struggle. But you know what? God is right beside me.

And God is right beside you, too.

The mountains...

A group of 20 seminary students spent 11 days in the mountains of Appalachia exploring the vanishing traditional culture and religion.

This particular picture was taken at an old, run down Rosenwald school, last used in 1955. Today, the community has received grants to refurbish this building and turn it in to a community center. Today, there are still no windows, there is a fallen piano in the corner, steps are broken, but fresh wood sits below window frames, and roof supports are in place. There is still hope for this aging building because the foundation is strong.

And isn't that the point? A strong foundation means that even though uses may change, and the outside may have a new look, but at the heart of it, it is still the same. How is that for a metaphor for Appalachia? The mountains may have new houses on them (and some may fall), the people may change and the churches may change, but in reality, the mountain is still the mountain. What created the place known as Appalachia is still there. You can blow off the top of the mountain looking for coal or to build roads, but the base of the mountains, the majority of their height, is still there. No-one can take away an entire range of mountains and what they mean to the people except God. And as we learned over the last two weeks, God is at the heart and soul of the mountains.

Countless experiences and many jokes stay with the members of this intentional community. Love grew in our little lodge in the mountains. Experiences with God permeated the air on a day spent in silence. Meaning was found in visits with men and women in their various ministries. Knowledge gleaned from local people and transplants from around the country. Peace discovered in hopeful words. Passion conveyed in stories unbound. Struggles shared in honest conversation.

From one generation to the next, knowledge was passed. The same way knowledge has been passed for generations in the mountain.

Looks like we connected with the traditions of the mountains more than it may have looked like initially. The heart of the mountains is still there. The passion of the people, new and old, has not gone. And God is still at the heart of it.

And awesome and tiring two weeks in the mountains have come to an end. Countless documents still left to be read and papers still to be written, but the friendships, well, they live on.